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Mark Blyth on What's So Dangerous About Austerity?

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, a book written by
Brown University Professor of International Political Economy Mark Blyth
and published last year by Oxford University Press, is one of the most
important works to have emerged in recent years on the religion of
austerity, the new dogma in neoliberal economics that is so perniciously
enforced today in the peripheral countries of the Eurozone (Greece,
Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) and loved by Republicans and all
sorts of right-wingers in the United States. In his book, Blyth exposes
how dangerous the policy of austerity has been in the past and explains
why it resurfaced in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.
With his critical analysis of austerity, Professor Blythe also provides a
damning critique of orthodox economics and shows that class politics is
very much alive in the actions of today's governments and the rich.

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